A/N: Written some odd years ago and only recently rediscovered on my hard drive.
She had thought it would be harder, really. Constantly adapting to roles, forever remaining in-character for whoever you were currently portraying. Always alert, always ready, always remembering who you were. She marveled at the ease and grace in which Saint Dane did it with. He was just so good. Too good. She would never be able to compare.
But once she found herself doing the same, it wasn't half as difficult as she'd originally thought. Sure, there was something of an adjustment, and a bit of a learning curve, but all in all, it came quite naturally. Well, when she thought about it, there was really no reason why it shouldn't come naturally. Her whole life had been spent with her pretending to be what she was not. This was really no different.
And so, she played her parts. She acted her characters. She immersed herself in her roles. Moreover, she was good at it. Even Saint Dane noticed the elegance that she had in becoming her characters, and praised her, sending her high into the clouds of joy.
Each role presented a new personage, each part was different to play. She loved them all. She loved learning about the role, understanding its many angles and surfaces. Using their speech, mannerisms, gestures. Knowing their past, strengths, weaknesses. Altering to their way of thinking. Letting them, in a way, become an extension of herself.
"Hey, you haven't told me anything about your mom."
She played her parts. She acted her characters. She immersed herself in her roles. Moreover, she was good at it.
But in that moment, she was not playing any part. She was not acting any character. She was not immersed in any role. All of that was forgotten. The night sky stretched out before her, vast, expansive, never ending. In that moment, there was no acting involved. Acting and pretending were completely abandoned. Not by choice – Nevva would never disband her tight walls and ramparts intentionally – merely because, right then, she was powerless to keep them up. To keep remembering who she was supposed to be at a moment in time when she could barely keep herself together.
"I don't talk about her," she said, her voice hardly above a whisper. "I'm sorry. It's just . . . difficult. My mother and I had problems. I want to let it go at that, okay?"
"Yeah, sure, sorry," said Pendragon hastily.
She had almost forgotten he was there.
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Just don't mention that woman anymore. To anyone."
He quickly agreed, and changed the subject to Ibara and its rebuilding. Oh, yes. Ibara. Because her name was Telleo: a young woman who tended to the sick, wanted to create a better future for her home planet, and had something of an infatuation with the teenager sitting beside her. This was Telleo. She was Telleo.
Telleo, Telleo, Telleo.
She didn't actually know what Telleo's relationship had been with her mother.
She darted a side-glance at Pendragon – had he noticed that a change had come over her? Did he perhaps know something that she didn't about Telleo's mother? Was he going to find her out, discover who she truly was?
But, no – he was not. He was merely rambling on about moving junk and rubble off the beach. Sometimes she forgot how simple-minded the boy really was.
But his words remained, permeating the air, closing around her throat in a vice.
Your mom. Your mom.
She pushed the words away but they came back, like a chant, filling each fiber of her body.
Your mom. Your mom. Your mom.
She dug her hands into the sand, needing something solid to hold onto. Anything solid that was left in this world where the one person who was supposed to always be there for her had not been there for her. Continued to not be there for her. Would never be there for her.
Mom. Mom . . .
When Pendragon took her hand, she jumped at the contact, made to pull back. But his hand was more solid than the shifting sand, more solid than the echoes choking her ears and her lungs, so instead she held on. She held onto his hand, she, not the infatuated woman called Telleo but the abandoned little girl named Nevva, and he held on in return. And the two lost children held hands in silence for the rest of the night beneath the unending sky.
A/N: Reviews are love.